The Époque's Advertisement and What Followed
by The Grammarian
Summary: Christine comes to bury Erik with the little gold ring as she promised him she would. Dark, Lerouxbased. Complete!
1. The Grave

Wow. My first phic. Well, this is quite a momentous moment. I've always wondered what it was like for Christine when she had to go bury Erik.

I got a lot of inspiration for this phic from my own dislike of the dark and the unknown. Everyone, to some degree, I think, fears the unknown. And who's ever buried a genius several stories underground before?

Expect this to be dark, as I enjoy darkness. My most profound and heartfelt thanks from the very very bottom of the bottomless abyss of my heart to people who read this.

Thanks---

-THE GRAMMARIAN.

* * *

"_I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercy notwithstanding his crimes. Yes, I am sure, quite sure that I prayed beside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot where they were burying the phonographic records. It was his skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Daaé had certainly slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise. The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daaé fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the opera-house."_

_-Gaston Leroux_

The freshly dug, moist pile of earth next to the little well was like a beacon in the dim light, like a magnet which pulled the eye's gaze towards it. It was an abnormality in the unchanging weak light of the cellars, an earthen wound in the continuous face of the underground road.

If any living being had deigned to pass through this dark underworld it would have stopped and stared at that sight indeed strange to behold. If any creature of flesh and blood passed through these halls, in any case. But if they had, they would have deemed this strange mound, this sudden change, this thing whose appearance defied explanation, they would have deemed it a grave.

Strangely enough, there was one last mortal in the Underworld, probably the very last for a very long time. After all, what company was there to be had in the fifth cellar? Only the ghosts of the dead, the rats, and a spider or two.

Yet a strange, fair creature lingered in the bluish depths of this Parisian Hades still, lingering about the little well and kneeling by the earthen grave. This incongruity in the darkness, kneeling in a pool of fabric and lace, was the essence of ethereality. The darkness dripping from the walls and congealing at the furthest ends of the corridor threatened to swallow this small figure whole, and digest it in the belly of the lurking unknown darkness.

She was like a flower in a swamp, or a faerie creature wandered from its home. The small figure that knelt at the well was like a candle which could be snuffed out at any moment by the darkness and the despair which permeated the Opera's belly.

Flaxen hair tumbling about her face, Christine knelt numbly by the fresh grave, mindless of the state of her dress and, in fact, everything around her. Her finger felt dull and heavy in the absence of the golden ring that winked ominously at her in those weeks above the ground. How it frightened her to see that glowing band each day, binding her as surely as chains would, reminding her of a promise that dampened any moments of happiness she might deign to enjoy. More surely than a pocket-watch, it counted the progress of time. More surely than any clock, it reminded her of the hour when she would go to the Rue Scribe and enter once more the Underworld where her terrible drama began – and ended. Christine bit her lip unconsciously, as she had taken to doing, and felt for the ring on her finger, as she had done so often in those past weeks. The grave drew her eye, and her throat throbbed, an achy feeling like suppressed tears.

Slowly, falteringly, she brought her thoughts back to the present, as they scattered like frightened deer.

What time was it? The Underworld marked no passage of time. Christine jerked as if to move, but settled down again with a disconsolate rustle of cloth, her thoughts wandering, scattering.

She could not seem to fix her mind on what she should do. Or what had happened. She never knew that she would have the resolve to venture down into the hostile depths of the fifth cellar. She never knew she had the resolve to enter the house on the lake, so empty and still, the absence of its owner so achingly apparent. She tried to think about something else. The darkness was stifling.

Christine absently rubbed at her porcelain cheek, where dried tears had stiffened her pale skin. The darkness of the tunnel began to close in on her, and a feeling of primordial panic began to close over her like a dark veil.

Her hand began to ache. The darkness receded. She glanced down at her pale, clenched knuckles and realized that she was still gripping the crumpled clipping from the Époque. She unfolded it with shaking hands and scrubbed painfully at her eyes with her clammy palm. The dull pain sharpened her senses marginally. The soft, thin paper was damp and crumpled in soft ridges from when she had clutched it in her hand – when had that been? Christine scratched at the ink with her little fingernail, wearing the paper thin and the three words off. She dared not look at the article, let alone what was printed on it, for fear that it would remind her of the chills of the unknown, and remind her of what she had just done. The grave pulled her eye again.

She had brought the key to the Rue Scribe with her, and entered the belly of the Opera. She had buried Erik, as she promised him she would upon seeing the advertisement of his demise. She felt for the little gold ring again, out of habit. It was not there. A chill rippled over her skin, and her stomach clenched. The darkness was so frightening. But she daren't move, lest it catch her. Death and the dark: Christine feared both...the unknown and what might wait out there in that unknown to snuff out her life like the pinch of a candle by the giant hand of Destiny…

Ironically, the unfortunate Christine had encountered these age-old fears, but certainly not conquered them. The occasional hopeful thought came to mind as she sat there in the eerie world of light and shadow. Raoul. How long had she been down here? Was he wondering about her? Was he thinking about her?

Christine couldn't smile. Not here. It felt almost unholy to think thoughts of joy in the dismal grave-yard. Ah, terror! Erik was buried here. Christine shuddered, and pulled away from the mound of earth with a sudden horror. His presence, though a dubious comfort during that time that seemed now so long ago, was stifling. The very thought of death – of Erik! – set Christine's heart aflutter with fresh waves of terror.

She felt remorse, sadness, for _his _death. _Him. _She banished the image of the glossy black coffin, the black drapes, the _Dies Irae. _

But how could she feel anything but horror faced with this darkness, this plethora of unknown terrors that lurked in the shadows?

She had the key to the Rue Scribe. She could leave. Now. She could leave and run up to the world of light and life. What was stopping her? A brief flash of confidence blazed in her breast. "I want to leave," she said aloud. "I shall leave." Speaking aloud was a bit of a comfort in the oppressive silence.

Christine made as if to stand. _Erik! _She darted a fear-filled gaze, feral in its intensity, toward the mound of earth. She would have to pass the grave on her way out. The fear budded in her stomach again, a thorny plant which wormed its way through her and blossomed into fiendish flower. Childlike terrors, perhaps: the fears of the dark. But here, in the bowels of the earth, alone, it was impossible not to succumb to those puerile, yet ever so tangible fears. What was lurking out there? What was that _drip, drip?_ Easy to explain, Christine began to reassure herself, relaxing (one could envision a threatened cat slowly lowering its arched back). It was only the water.

That made her think of the lake, and then the siren. Erik's siren. Christine shivered. She couldn't stop thinking about all those childish terrors that she harbored, a simple reaction of her brain but ever the more frightening down in the darkness. There were certainly spiders down here, she reflected nervously.

Every nerve in her body frizzing with anxiety, she lurched awkwardly to her feet. She could leave. She _could _leave. There was nothing stopping her. But the thought of walking by the grave again couldn't bear thinking about.

Christine silently cursed her qualms, cursed what had brought her here. She sank down next to the little well, the only thing that seemed harmless. She couldn't turn away from the grave – that made her back prickle like she was being watched. So Christine Daaé settled for sinking down in a pool of cloth the way she had been before, closing her eyes and letting the scalding tears burn rivulets of heat in her cold cheeks. She sat, and cried, wept at the ridiculous hopelessness of her situation.

Somehow, Christine slept.


	2. The Dream

She wandered in a world of light and shadow, a world of dreams, images, thoughts, and feelings. The pressure from her distressing day did not abate, here in this unknown place. A part of her told herself that she was dreaming, but it she could feel the all-too-familiar prickle of fear in the very depths of her being, the most primal instincts brought to life as she faced the unknown in her sleep.

_Christine tossed and turned, unaware in her restlessly slumbering state that a smudge of dirt marred her porcelain cheek. Her hands clenched involuntarily, the knuckles whiter even than the pale skin of her hand, around the ripped and dirty article from the Époque, its edges fuzzy from the constant nervous perspiration of her clammy palm. Curled up in a fetal semi-circle, her dress scattered in musty folds about her, Christine's slow and heavy breathing was the only thing that proclaimed her slumbering. She moaned softly, her chapped lips moving in half-formed words. _

Disjointed feelings and senses assaulted her. Our dreams, though lacking coherence, can retain a disturbing reality. The stuff of our dreams is not communicated through our visions of them, but more through the knowledge, the sense that _they are there. _This feeling, this indescribable knowing, makes any nightmare all the more frightening: that we know that out there, there really is our worst fear, lurking. We can imagine its face all too clearly though we can never see it.

It was this that she felt. It was that creeping fear that the unknown was lurking out there. It was the fear of visualizing the _face _of her fears, for worry that seeing the thing of her nightmares would give it substance, and it would _strike…_lunging for her throat and ripping the life out of her. Nonsensical though our fears may sometimes seem, in the dark they are more than real: our belief in them give them enough substance to make one turn tail and run.

_Christine rolled in her restive sleep, the hand that did not hold the clipping from l'Époque flaccid and clammy as a corpse's. Her hand flopped and brushed the grave dirt by the little well, and in her semi-conscious state, she withdrew her hand as if burned._

She was in a box. The fresh pine wood was rough against her fingers. She could not breathe.

It was a coffin. Fear surged like a bitter tide in her stomach.

_Her bloodless lips sagged open, saliva glistening in the corner of her mouth. Christine moaned, and jerked violently, her eyelids fluttering like errant butterflies. Her outstretched arm trembled, and she drew her knees tighter to her chest as if to present a smaller target to whatever was staring at her from the darkness, pricking pins and needles in her shoulder-blades._

She was no longer in the coffin, now, and the breakwater of relief halted the bitter tide of panic that had surged within her. Christine watched the jumbled images and feelings and senses of her dreams rush by like watching flotsam rush past in a swift river.

She was wandering in a curious field filled with overgrown grass and broken bits of stone. She wandered inattentively, nudging the strangely shaped, broken pieces of marble and plaster with a slippered foot. Time passed in strange dollops as time will do in dreams. The dandelion of the sun set in a violet sky, and ginger clouds scudded ominously across the heavens, colliding with foreboding storm-clouds of a vicious mauve. The bloody sunset faded quickly and Christine could barely see in the deepening cobalt dusk.

She wandered, unable to stop the pacing of her feet. The vicious thorn of doubt began prickling in her belly, but she couldn't stop those elegantly slippered feet from pacing, pacing, and pacing further across the strange grassy field.

_Fear made itself known, like a punch in the stomach, and she almost awoke. Unknowingly, her little pink nails dug into the back of her hand, leaving white crescent moons that shone palely in the eerie light of the underground, and then faded away. _

Her dreaming self felt that it was cold in the unknown meadow. She wanted to stop. She wanted to go home.

_Her eyes squeezed tightly shut, Christine drew a deep, shuddering breath. _

The clouds raced at a farcical speed across the blue sky, speckled with cirrus vapors like watered silk, and flocks of ravens cawed overhead. She took a rattling, trembling breath. As her feet continued to draw her along the never-ending turf, Christine noticed a monument of stone, standing where all the strange stones had fallen. A skeleton, clothed about in flowing robes, clutched a sickle and grinned at her with a mouth full of glinting teeth. The horrid light of the aberrant sky bathed the grisly monument in a chilling shade of red-brown – the sunrise begun too early. The grass glowed red as if bathed with blood, and still Christine's feet pulled her on, until she was staring up at the looming memorial, and she knew with chilling certainty that she had been traversing a tremendous graveyard.

Her treacherous feet walked on, and the bloody grass became rough stone, and her feet dragged until she fell and landed in a tangle of lace and choking sobs. The monument loomed over her. Engraved at the bony feet of the skeleton was: CHRISTINE DAAÉ.

Christine recoiled with a strangled cry, covering her eyes.

With a shriek that echoed horribly across the grave-yard, she drew her fingers away from her face, fingers that were only horribly glowing, white bone.

Her gravestone began to laugh, the death's head suddenly a real skull, instead of carved stone. It opened its jaws and began to laugh, a horrible sound, like the rattling of chains, the screaming of horses.

With the eldritch keening reverberating in her ears and a scream on her own lips, Christine awoke.


	3. The End

She jolted awake in the semidarkness, disoriented, the terrible familiar fear coursing through her veins like venom.

Clutching her pale fingers together, she felt a surge of relief to see the long bones of her hand covered by skin, albeit pale and parchment-like. The creeping, insidious fear, however, was not dispelled by the discovery of her entirely intact hand.

The room seemed to spin around her as she sat up. Her dress clung to her back uncomfortably in sweaty folds, and cold prickled her clammy arms. Her breath came in sharp gasps, her dream still all but reality. Christine's gaze darted like a hunted being's, taking in the coffin and the ever-present darkness – about to swallow her up!

There is a turning-point when one is exposed to one's fears relentlessly, we must surmise. A turning-point where the part of the mind that began by saying, _pooh! That isn't real; you're just imagining it, _ceases to disbelieve.The terror of the moment is so real and so captures us in its frightening reality that one must conclude that there is an instance when one's formerly sensible side begins to say, _I know you're out there! But I'll try with all my might to stay alive! _

Christine, having reached this point, experienced a moment of odd lucidity: she knew that she had to get out of the empty, dead cellars. The grave, as always, pulled her eye like a lodestone, and she stared at it with a perverse fascination. Her pink nails, ringed by dirt, dug into the back of her hand, giving her one last connection with the real world. Both ends of the passageway in the cellars stared at her, illuminated with sickly light and shading off into darkness. She had to get out.

Brushing her untidy hair back from her face and gnawing her lip unconsciously, Christine began to walk. She did not risk another look back at the awful grave behind her. She deliberately set one foot in front of the other, thinking of Raoul, thinking of coming back up to the light of day. She thoughts of happy things, of the red silk scarf that lay in her trunk, of her glorious wedding-dress and the day she had worn it. She pictured Raoul's face in her mind: smiling and joyful at seeing her. Was his face lined with worry at her absence right now?

A faint, metallic taste lingered, miasma-like, in her mouth, and she realized she had torn the skin of her lip. She raised a shaking finger to her chapped underlip and dabbed the blood away, shining like a bead on her fingertip in the wan light. Christine shuddered and wiped it away, where it left an eye-catching smear on her dirtied dress. She rubbed at her besmirched and bloodied fingernail, recalling another place, another time, when the monster had scored his own face with her little pink nails. She trembled, forcing thoughts of dead Erik out of her mind, like wiping away the blood on her lip.

She licked the salty wetness away, wetting her lips more out of nervousness than a need for cleanliness. She had forgotten all about her appearance.

If a passerby had walked in the vicinity of Christine in the streets, they would have thought her a waif. If someone had ventured down into the cellars somehow, they would have thought her a ghost of something dead: her dress was snagged from catching on things, during her fear-filled journey from the Rue Scribe to the well. Her face was tear-stained, her eyes reddened from tears of both fear and sorrow. Dirt smudged her smooth little hands, where she had involuntarily clutched for something in her nightmares. Purplish smudges, like the ends of sunsets, underlined her wide eyes, a testament to her fear and exhaustion. One would not have thought this Christine Daaé, the anomalous ingénue of the Paris Opera. Christine would not have recognized herself if she still retained her former childlike innocence. But now, in all probability, nothing could surprise Christine.

Christine thought nothing of this as she walked slowly and cautiously through the cellars, keeping the frightening thoughts at bay, a prison of her own mind as she trudged bit by bit through the subterranean passage. Her fears manifested themselves in every minute, every second that she traipsed through the cellar. It was a vicious circle. A rustle in the darkness, presumably a rat, would send her senses reeling and all her muscles would tense. Fear multiplied upon itself, and one small thing, one small rustle in the darkness, would send her thoughts whirling down a frightening track. She had to keep the terror at bay. _She had to keep the terror at bay. _This became almost a mantra, a little something that could divert her obstinate mind from visualizing those lurking fears. But it was a precarious balance, and one small move, one stray thought, could send her whirling into the most terrible abyss of all: the endless abyss of the human mind.

It was feasible that her carefully constructed concentration would slip. And slip it did, beginning with the innocent thought of quenching her mounting thirst with a glass of water. She could do with a bath, too, Christine thought with a naïve sigh. She recalled almost fondly the baths she had taken at the house on the lake, in the resplendent bath-tub.

A familiar icy feeling clenched in her stomach as she remembered the scissors. _The scissors! _Those big, cold, shining blades shone piercingly at her still from her mind's eye. The inevitable abyss of her anxiety loomed, and Christine fell deep into her terror, and it clutched her irresistibly in its clutching grasp.

Christine's shoulder-blades began to prickle. There was something, behind her, watching her. A shiver caressed her shoulders, and the suspense mounted in her chest until Christine could stand it no longer.

Gathering her skirts up in her two shaking fists, Christine began to run, her breaths coming in harsh sobs and her feet slapping against the hard ground. Her head began to pound, until she felt the throb of an impending headache throwing its aching haze about her already confused mind. A pallid, unhealthy sheen marked her forehead and her hair fluttered out behind her like a tattered flaxen banner. Tears blurred her vision, as she ran and ran and ran. The black creatures that tended the furnaces did not capture her attention as she flew by, for the only thing that occupied her mind was escaping the darkness, the prison of corporeal and mental things that had begun upon meeting Erik. Christine could have blamed Erik for the fear that now possessed her, for coming into her life and changing it irrevocably. But somehow, Christine didn't. Was it pity? Was it her enduring naïveté? Was it kindness? Perhaps all of these things. Who knew?

But Christine herself did not reflect upon these things. Decisions, even life-changing ones, took the space of a few seconds to achieve. This fear, the dread of Erik and the dread of the unknown, was every second, every minute, every hour she spend in the loathsome cellar. She could think of nothing else. Christine thoughts wandered ridiculously in her delirium. Everything that she wanted was waiting up in the light, and everything that would keep her from her aspirations, her wants, and her dreams, was waiting to snatch her up, here in the dark.

She had been running forever, and for no time at all. The grave was far behind her, yet Christine could still see Erik, see his grave, see his motionless fingers, and the skeletal bones of her own hand. She could still see the gravestone, bathed in a gruesome light like the blood that smudged her lips and her chin. The laughter was still ringing in her ears, and she had to get away. Christine's breath was beginning to come shorter, and it seemed that she could not draw another breath, but her feet kept running, and that reminded her of the force that drew her on and on towards her grave…in the dream…and Christine was afraid, and that kept her running, running, running.

Her last coherent thought had been _the Rue Scribe. _The key to the Rue Scribe had leapt into her hand – she did not remember putting it into the fist that didn't hold the clipping from the Époque, but she could feel it now, cold and heavy, digging into her clenched palm. Her hand was beginning to sweat around the key, its length growing slick and hot in her fist. It was her key, both in a literal and metaphorical way, for escape from the tangible prison of her body and the intangible prison of her mind. And so she clasped it all the tighter, smelling the characteristic repelling scent of the heated metal with gasping breaths, letting the edges dig painfully into her palm..

Christine had not been running for as long as she surmised, but the hasty and frenzied retreat she had beaten from the grave had taken its toll upon her. Still her pace did not slow, until the toe of her shoe caught upon something protruding from the earth. Christine stumbled and fell, her arms windmilling as her torso bend in an attempt to halt her descent toward the ground. She staggered, leaning forward as if retching, but caught herself upon her palms, her hands and her knees grating abruptly into the hard ground. Christine's hands began to sting, the skin scratched and ragged and red. She hissed in a painful breath, looking at the reddened skin and the patterns of grime that crisscrossed her battered palms from her fall. Wetting her chapped lips, Christine continued to hurry down the tunnel, not able to sprint any longer.

In her haste and carelessness, Christine had not noticed the small _ping _in the shadows at the moment of her fall. She had resumed running, not noticing the glint of metal from the shadows: the key to the Rue Scribe which had fallen from her hand.

It seemed hours, days later, when Christine could run no further. Her breath throbbing and puffing in her throat, her legs shaky, Christine began to slow. Coming to an exhausted walk, Christine pushed her lank hair back from her face, brushing at the beads of sweat that festooned her pale forehead and gasping breaths of the damp air of the passageway as if they were her last. A dull pain throbbed in the center of her chest with each breath. A bright smear of blood besmirched her bloodless lips, token to her fretful lip-biting.

Christine peered at the tunnel. It went no further, indeed, but ended. Christine wondered vaguely if this could be the mirror through which she had first entered the catacombs of the Opera. In her confused, hazy mind, she supposed that she could enter the Opera through her dressing-room and then from there find a cab to take her home. Sweet relief blossomed in the wasteland of desolate fear, and her need to get out seemed to become even more desperate, now that her proximity to freedom was so near, now that she could see Raoul and forget all about the terrible darkness and Erik's grave. Her need, her fear, that human desire for light and happiness, pushed her on, and she all but flew the last metres to the end of the tunnel.

A wan smile lighting on her face as she dashed to it, Christine clutched her little fingers together in a pitiable expression of absolute joy.

The blooming smile of just so many seconds before disappeared as Christine reeled back from the wall with a strangled cry. There was no mirror.

She would have to try to find the Rue Scribe, Christine thought. Yes. She could try to find the Rue Scribe. She opened the dirt-encrusted palm which held the key to the latter.

If faces could fall as they do in the aphorism, Christine's happy face would have fallen into the deepest abyss there was. _No, _she whispered, but it came out as a hoarse wheeze. The key was not there. Christine wondered how she could have deluded herself into thinking that she could escape these cellars, escape this vicious labyrinth, escape even the prison of her mind and body wrought by Erik's hand. There was no hope for escape. She could wander in here until she died of thirst, of hunger. She could scream for help until the walls bled. She could beat her fists against the cold, unyielding floor, but all of it would be to no avail. She would not survive long enough to find her way out.

Christine drew in one vast breath, and abruptly turned and vomited upon the floor, even her own body betraying her in the very end. She choked and sobbed, tears running rivulets in her grimy face. Her legs failed her, and she sunk down to her knees in despair, tearing the skin off of her kneecaps and falling in a mound of tears and blood. Her voice no longer failed her, and Christine Daaé gave voice to a scream that was the epitome of despair, the archetype of desperation. It began in the very depths of her being and found its way to her throat, throbbing and panting and bursting into a full-throated shriek that echoed off the walls and accompanied her in the expression of her uttermost grief. She dug her nails into the back of her hand until the skin came up in little flesh-coloured crescents. She would have screamed again, but her throat was raw and all she could utter were hoarse gasps. It frightened her. Everything was frightening. What had she done to deserve this? She thought desperately. Wasn't there some God out there that would save her? Though she knew that it was hopeless, she had screamed until the walls had bled, and she began to beat her fists against the floor in despair.

There would be no wedding for Christine Daaé. There would be no requiem mass for Christine Daaé. There would not even be a stone tomb with her name engraved on it.

Perhaps, in the future, someone would find her bones.


End file.
